Summary

This book examines the representation of blackness on television at the height of the southern civil rights movement and again in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush years. In the process, it looks carefully at how television's ideological projects with respect to race have supported or conflicted with the industry's incentive to maximize profits or consolidate power.

Sasha Torres examines the complex relations between the television industry and the civil rights movement as a knot of overlapping interests. She argues that television coverage of the civil rights movement during 1955-1965 encouraged viewers to identify with black protestors and against white police, including such infamous villains as Birmingham's Bull Connor and Selma's Jim Clark. Torres then argues that television of the 1990s encouraged viewers to identify with police against putatively criminal blacks, even in its dramatizations of police brutality.

Torres's pioneering analysis makes distinctive contributions to its fields. It challenges television scholars to consider the historical centrality of race to the constitution of the medium's genres, visual conventions, and industrial structures. And it displaces the analytical focus on stereotypes that has hamstrung assessments of television's depiction of African Americans, concentrating instead on the ways in which African Americans and their political collectives have actively shaped that depiction to advance civil rights causes. This book also challenges African American studies to pay closer and better attention to television's ongoing role in the organization and disorganization of U.S. racial politics.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

The Vicissitudes of the Stereotype Issues and Some Answers Television and Conservative Racial Projects after the '60s

CHAPTER ONE

"In a crisis we must have a sense of drama": Civil Rights and Televisual Information The Burden of Liveness "Pictures are the point of television news" "We have shut ourselves off from the rest of the world" "That cycle of violence and publicity" "The vehemence of a dream"

CHAPTER TWO

The Double Life of "Sit-In" "Sit-In"'s Industrial Context "Sit-In" Flashes Back "Sit-In" as a Movement Text "Sit-In" and Black Idiom

CHAPTER THREE

King TV Rodney King Live Liveness: An Ideology of Television and Race L.A. Law and Televisual Justice Doogie Howser, M.D., and Televisual Instruction Rodney King Dead

CHAPTER FOUR

Giuliani Time: Urban Policing and Brooklyn South Cops and Cop Shows Giuliani Time How to Identify with the Cops Good Cop, Bad Cop

This book examines the representation of blackness on television at the height of the southern civil rights movement and again in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush years. In the process, it looks carefully at how television's ideological projects with respect to race have supported or conflicted with the industry's incentive to maximize profits or consolidate power.

Sasha Torres examines the complex relations between the television industry and the civil rights movement as a knot of overlapping interests. She argues that television coverage of the civil rights movement during 1955-1965 encouraged viewers to identify with black protestors and against white police, including such infamous villains as Birmingham's Bull Connor and Selma's Jim Clark. Torres then argues that television of the 1990s encouraged viewers to identify with police against putatively criminal blacks, even in its dramatizations of police brutality.

Torres's pioneering analysis makes distinctive contributions to its fields. It challenges television scholars to consider the historical centrality of race to the constitution of the medium's genres, visual conventions, and industrial structures. And it displaces the analytical focus on stereotypes that has hamstrung assessments of television's depiction of African Americans, concentrating instead on the ways in which African Americans and their political collectives have actively shaped that depiction to advance civil rights causes. This book also challenges African American studies to pay closer and better attention to television's ongoing role in the organization and disorganization of U.S. racial politics.

The Vicissitudes of the Stereotype Issues and Some Answers Television and Conservative Racial Projects after the '60s

CHAPTER ONE

"In a crisis we must have a sense of drama": Civil Rights and Televisual Information The Burden of Liveness "Pictures are the point of television news" "We have shut ourselves off from the rest of the world" "That cycle of violence and publicity" "The vehemence of a dream"

CHAPTER TWO

The Double Life of "Sit-In" "Sit-In"'s Industrial Context "Sit-In" Flashes Back "Sit-In" as a Movement Text "Sit-In" and Black Idiom

CHAPTER THREE

King TV Rodney King Live Liveness: An Ideology of Television and Race L.A. Law and Televisual Justice Doogie Howser, M.D., and Televisual Instruction Rodney King Dead

CHAPTER FOUR

Giuliani Time: Urban Policing and Brooklyn South Cops and Cop Shows Giuliani Time How to Identify with the Cops Good Cop, Bad Cop

Summary

This book examines the representation of blackness on television at the height of the southern civil rights movement and again in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush years. In the process, it looks carefully at how television's ideological projects with respect to race have supported or conflicted with the industry's incentive to maximize profits or consolidate power.

Sasha Torres examines the complex relations between the television industry and the civil rights movement as a knot of overlapping interests. She argues that television coverage of the civil rights movement during 1955-1965 encouraged viewers to identify with black protestors and against white police, including such infamous villains as Birmingham's Bull Connor and Selma's Jim Clark. Torres then argues that television of the 1990s encouraged viewers to identify with police against putatively criminal blacks, even in its dramatizations of police brutality.

Torres's pioneering analysis makes distinctive contributions to its fields. It challenges television scholars to consider the historical centrality of race to the constitution of the medium's genres, visual conventions, and industrial structures. And it displaces the analytical focus on stereotypes that has hamstrung assessments of television's depiction of African Americans, concentrating instead on the ways in which African Americans and their political collectives have actively shaped that depiction to advance civil rights causes. This book also challenges African American studies to pay closer and better attention to television's ongoing role in the organization and disorganization of U.S. racial politics.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

The Vicissitudes of the Stereotype Issues and Some Answers Television and Conservative Racial Projects after the '60s

CHAPTER ONE

"In a crisis we must have a sense of drama": Civil Rights and Televisual Information The Burden of Liveness "Pictures are the point of television news" "We have shut ourselves off from the rest of the world" "That cycle of violence and publicity" "The vehemence of a dream"

CHAPTER TWO

The Double Life of "Sit-In" "Sit-In"'s Industrial Context "Sit-In" Flashes Back "Sit-In" as a Movement Text "Sit-In" and Black Idiom

CHAPTER THREE

King TV Rodney King Live Liveness: An Ideology of Television and Race L.A. Law and Televisual Justice Doogie Howser, M.D., and Televisual Instruction Rodney King Dead

CHAPTER FOUR

Giuliani Time: Urban Policing and Brooklyn South Cops and Cop Shows Giuliani Time How to Identify with the Cops Good Cop, Bad Cop